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Certified Email Not Here to Reduce Spam
An anonymous reader writes "Goodmail CEO Richard Gingras surprised Legislators and advocacy groups today when he announced that the CertifiedMail program being implemented by AOL and Yahoo is not meant to reduce spam. Rather than helping to reduce spam Gingras claimed that the point is to allow users to verify who important messages are really from, like a message from your bank or credit card company."
Perhaps also to work as an effective, if limited, white list. Not only will it tell you what emails are "important" but it would certainly be an easy to way to keep a small-sized good-guy mailing list.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
Its much easier to succeed, if you never try anything difficult.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
CAKE
But, I've not had much time to work on it since I've been employed. :-( And it's a much nicer, decentralized solution to this problem that has potentially much less weight and wider applicability than PGP.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Remember the paper from Harward dealing with phishing and why it works?
People don't even notice security features. They don't notice HTTPS, they don't notice certificates, they don't even notice bogus URLs. Why should they notice a "verified" mail (or lack of this verification)?
And those who do already know how to deal with phishing mails, they are already capable of discriminating between fraudulent and legit mails.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's all about money. I just can't wait until I get to pay 33 cents to send my Parents an email.
So this is just a paid for whitelist?
Hello, McFly?! If I'm expecting emails from my bank, I'll be putting them on my safelist anyway! Them and everyone in contacts, emails for forum notifications, newsletters that I want.
This doesn't seem to be doing anything other than making money for someone else.
The problem is, if most of the users were smart enough to realize that, we wouldn't have phishing because people wouldn't fall for it in the first place. I mean, it isn't exactly hard for users to realize that http://666.43.123.666/bankofamerica/mylogin.php isn't a valid BOA website. If they can't figure that out, why do you think this will be any different?
*sigh*
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Why not joining bluesecurity.com and report SPAM automatically? At 370K members, it's guaranteed to slow down the spammer's website (spam victims' slashdotting!) until they opt-out the complainers out of their lists.
They got even a Firefox extension for reporting spam with Yahoo, Hotmail and GMail.
In other words, CertifiedMail is here to certify the delivery of spam by the "important" spammers who have the resources to pay for it.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Oh yes, there will be spam..it seems to be here to stay.
Just like every other problem the 'bad guys' face when exploiting the rest of the population, they will find away around this too.
The news will be that if this practice does go into wide usage, spammers will turn toward draining large, anonymous bank accounts to fund their e-mail influxes.
This 'tax' will only create more problems than necessary.
My advice: leave what isn't broken alone and if you do have problems, then I suggest you install a good e-mail filter to pick out the spam that does get through.
Pat
Goodmail's service is built around one single idea: easy to pitch to CEO's of large mail providers.
The providers get paid, and they get a good excuse for charging those fees. End of story.
If Goodmail's intentions were genuine, they wouldn't charge the "businesses" for every separate mail provider, but create globally valid certificates and then discuss with mail providers of accepting them.
However who would care to accept the certificates if he doesn't get the dough (the fees)? So there, we arrive at what Goodmail did.
Can you imagine paying up completely independently to every single ISP in the world so it can accept your SSL certificate? Yea, it's THAT bad...
If many companies do this, then the only "certified" mail in the box really will be spam. And then I really will know--little blue ribbon=spam.
Phew, I thought I wasn't going to be able to tell it apart from my legitimate mail!
It appears that site you posted, http://666.43.123.666/bankofamerica/mylogin.php, has already been slashdotted. Anyone know a mirror where I can login to my account?
This really isn't news. This is just an acknowledgment of the deceit behind their earlier statements. They did a real crappy job of deceit though, as everyone saw this as something that wouldn't block spam. Instead I'll have spam with little blue ribbons that was paid for. And then I'll have spam that I can't tell apart from my normal mail because it wasn't paid for, but it made it through the spam filter (except really we all cann t311 1t apart fr0m 0ur normal mail for the 0b>i0us reasons).
Email address, Web URL, refering party -- each should be bulletproof BEFORE you extend your trust. Otherwise, you might get scammed.
Take this article. We know it's reliable and trustworthy. How?
Well it was submitted by "anonymous reader," who has posted many a fine gem on this here site.
Then it was filtered by an "editor" named "ScuttleMonkey." How can you not trust a monkey? Monkeys rock!
Then, when you click on the link, you see you have been taken to "Spam Daily News," a bastion of journalistic integrity that makes the New York Times look like the New York Times before Judy Miller got fired.
Finally, the whole thing originated from a little place we like to call "Slashdot." I think the quality of this brand needs no elaboration.
So as you can see, it is not hard to recognize a secure, reliable, not-at-all-misleading-or-shady chain of Internet links. Happy surfing!
I spent an hour beating them up on a number of issues, much to the embarrassment of my 'far too ready to sign anything' CTO.
Their VP kept harping on how "it will tell users they can trust your mail". My point that the real challenge was getting users NOT to trust things was not well received, to say the least. I also mercilessly attacked their constant assertion that their widget is "unspoofable", on the simple grounds that a similar widget in a similar location would be sufficient to fool many users.
My CTO has been asking me when we're going to implement Goodmail ever since. Khaaan!
Wait. I don't get it. If the purpose is to ensure the sender really IS the sender, why do I have to pay up again?? If I'm the BankofSlashdot and I send emails to my customers from the email accountdetails@bankofslashdot.org, why is it they can't just add me to a registered senders list with my server's IP recorded? Why's that suddenly cost money?
If the purpose isn't to reduce spam, what does this new pay-for-being-recognized service offer that current ISPs don't already? Most ISPs will begin taking actions against your spam if you start spamming without contacting them anyway, and you are looking at legal trouble if you spam with forged headers or people who have opted out. Through whitelists and regulations, the framework is already in place for the legit spammers to spam. AOL already has whitelists. AOL already negotiates and limits email volume with mass email marketers. AOL already uses blacklists. And this whole thing isn't even mandatory!
So I'm really not sure what this pay system is supposed to do except earn AOL an extra dime at no added cost.
say you're the bank of america, and you send your "transactional" mail with this GoodMail thing turned on and the little flag set. what about your other emails that you don't pay for? if any of your mail is sent uncertified, then phishers can just impersonate that "oh this is just one of those uncertified emails we the bank of america send you occasionally - click here to see our latest offers (requires SSN)".
so suddenly you have to pay for _all_ your mail just to maintain your credibility. and then what if you cross the spam-complaint level goodmail sets accidentally and they throw you off their system (as they are contractually obliged to do)? does that mean that nobody will ever trust your mails again? do you get to send out one last certified mail saying "okay from now on pay no attention to that little flag?"
it seems a really bad idea for a big company to place their credentials in trust with a third party and then let them charge them for every mail they send
There are some users who might not notice that, but some aren't s obviously bad as that. What if they used http://bankofamerica.secure.com/ , do you expect everyone to realize that there is a huge difference between http://secure.bankofamerica.com/ and http://bankofamerica.secure.com/ ?
The US Postal Service demoed just such a thing many, many years ago. They had an email encryption and delivery service to verify that the message was not altered. I suppose the problem in certifying the sender and receiver and proving delivery (to a person - not a mail spool) were technical issues they couldn't handle.
The difference of the USPS vs. Goodmail is that the USPS has official legal authority for such thing as mail tampering and proof of delivery.
I suppose if they were to offer the service now, Goodmail would buy a law to prohibit to USPS from competing against a private business as Sen. Santorum is trying to do with the weather service.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Actually none of the ISPs have any interest in reducing spam. They make to much money off of the spam operators and the sites that host the products provided by the spammers. Taking actual measures to reduce spam would cost the ISPs to much money.
Spammers steal to advertise a "product." They steal resources from anyone they need to advertise their product. You don't suppose these people run the other parts of the their business the same way? Legitimate IPSs don't enjoy hosting spammers in any fashion. This is why nearly all spamming done using cracked botnet zombies (baring a sizable chunk of mainsleaze spam). A quick check of the spam in my Junk folder indicates that most spammers host their websites on non-US systems, or are broken. On a nearly weekly basis I watch a small shared webhosting provider get hosed when his spamming customer lies to him, then screws him out of payment when the webhoster's provider gets involved. The vast majority of the ISPs in the civilized universe want spammers to loose IP connectivity. The largest of sites spend *millions* blocking spam both inbound and outbound.
Instead, they want to make money from legimate companies that want to get their messages to end users. This is a win win for the ISPs, but does nothing for end users.
It's a win for the users as well. The AOL mail client will be able to tell the user that the mail they're reading is indeed from Bank of America, and that other piece of mail is not from BoA. If AOL and Yahoo! know that BoA's mail all has goodmail tokens, and BoA mail shows up that doesn't have mail, it must therefore be a phish (seriously, go look at Goodmail's website complete with the AOL mail client screen shots). AOL's goodmail implementation is ONLY for transctional mail. That was the basis of Gingras' statement.
The handwaving about AOL charging to deliver mail is, of course, interesting. One would think that AOL is going to make out like bandits on all of the spam they'll be delivering now. That's simply not the case. The goodmail system is designed to support itself, not AOL or Yahoo!. Goodmail will be charging enough to keep themselves in business and keep the accreditation program working. I somehow doubt there's much left in the cost structure to kickback to AOL in any amount they can measure.
As discussed many times here the only way to defeat spam is to choke off the money flow to the people that use spam to advertise. There are two ways to stop the flow of money. First is to go after the spammers and advertisers. So far this has proven ineffective.
Is the strategy ineffective or is our execution of the strategy ineffective? We have weak anti-spam laws that do more to enable the practice than to actually put a stop to it. We have standards bodies that can't come up with effective reputation and sender authorization systems, leaving ISPs to invent their own solution (see goodmail). We have transit providers who don't have the guts to de-peer a rouge network who won't clean up what they're transiting.
Second way is to go after the idiots that actually buy stuff from spammers.
Wow. You don't actually think people *buy* real stuff from spammers? And that the spammers are really selling the stuff they're advertising? Ok, maybe the pharma spammers, but the rest of them? Not so much. These people are theves. They steal for a living.
Going back a week in my Junk box, I see pharma spam, penis pill spam, p0rn spam, mortgage spam, 419 spam, and pump-n-dump spam. Exactly what products are being sold in the spam I've gotten in the last week? Of the things in my list that even sound like products (drugs, penis pills, p0rn, and mortgages) none of those are products that need to be sold by cost shifted advertising. If you have to resort to these tactics to see these products, there's something wrong with the products. That's assuming
GnuPG / PGP signing, with peer-based levels of trust. Or even better: get the public key direct from your bank when you first log in to your account. Added bonus, you have the option of turning on encrypted email.
This might bring up the question of encrypted spam, but your keyring would act as a whitelist. If some random person sent you an encrypted or signed message, then you would be presented with a message asking if it should be accepted.
All we need is a simplified way to do this for the general public. Too bad Thunderbird doesn't come with Enigmail preinstalled. We'd probably need something else for webmail. (FF extension?)
Can I ask what happened to using Personal certificates?? Why, when we use SSL certificates to verify that a website we are visting is actually the true company, can't we use personal certificates to verify that the email we are reciving is actually from the company?? Surely they could configure their mail servers to filter out email on this basis without requiring a 3rd part solution that makes you pay for it. Hate to state the obvious but this is just the big companies way to getting their hands in on a great free thing that the internet provides
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